Where is Siri for Mac OS X… or Windows?

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The iPhone 4S and Siri have now experienced life outside the sacred, vaulted halls of Cupertino for one week, and the reviews from consumers and tech pundits alike are almost universally positive. Early impressions seem to indicate that Siri might not herald a complete revolution in mobile computing, but it’s certainly a very cool addition that works a lot better than expected.

Except… there’s still that niggling issue with using Siri the virtual assistant in a public place. Sure, there are plenty of videos of people using Siri while surrounded by giggling, jealous friends, where Siri is the highlight of the show and it’s actually cool to talk to your phone — but so far, there are scant few reports of what it feels like to use Siri while walking down a street… because no one dares do it.

In reality, unless Apple yet again changes the very fabric of society, Siri will primarily be used when you’re at home or in the office, either alone or surrounded by close friends and family. Now, Siri is almost certainly coming to the iPad 3 (or perhaps the iPad 2, when Siri leaves beta testing), but get this: Isn’t there another computer that we regularly interact with while at home or in the office? A laptop or desktop, perhaps?

Just imagine if Siri ran on your Mac OS X computer. OS X Siri would work almost exactly like her iOS sister, but because background noise would be less of a concern she might be voice- rather than button-activated. Functionality-wise, imagine the possibilities:

“Siri, search for some flight deals to London and pop up a tab when you’ve found something.”

“Siri, start downloading my usual Tuesday TV shows.”

“What song is currently playing, Siri?”

“Quick, Siri, take a photo!”

And so on. OS X Siri would work as flawlessly as iOS Siri, but it would simply be faster, more accurate, and capable of carrying out far more actions. You wouldn’t have to worry about cellular coverage, either.

So where is Siri for Mac OS X? Well, here’s the good news: it’s almost guaranteed to appear in a future version of OS X. It might debut with OS X Lynx (or whatever 10.8 is called), or it might even ferry in OS 11, if Apple ever decides to move on from OS X. Siri for iOS isn’t revolutionary because we’re still inexorably tied to our laptop and desktop computers — but Siri for OS X… well, that could just be the first step towards a Star Trek-like “computer.”

Of course, for voice controls to really revolutionize computing, Microsoft would have to get on board and bring Siri-like functionality to the other 95% of consumers. On the other hand, though, it seems too late for inclusion in Windows 8 — and by the time Windows 9 rolls around in three years, consumers might have already moved on to the voice-commanded OS X. Maybe Siri for OS X is exactly what Apple needs to grab another large chunk of market share; perhaps Siri for OS X is the next iPod or iPhone.

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or perhaps all of you pepole at extremetech should stop saying apple is going to dominate the world. jeez tha man is dead, sad news and all, but stop licking the fruit´s ass!

Daniel Santiago

or perhaps all of you pepole at extremetech should stop saying apple is going to dominate the world. jeez tha man is dead, sad news and all, but stop licking the fruit´s ass!

http://profiles.google.com/artroy Arthur Roy

Windows has had a siri for many years, works lile shit just it does on iOS

Roberto Pérez

Obviously you don’t know anything about Windows. Voice recognition has been in there since years. It’s nothing new. Actually the first time I used something comparable was on MS-DOS 5.xx. That must have been 20 years ago…

mori bund

Didn’t you know: after Apple has invented the Smartphone, the Tablet, video-telephony (FaceTime) and many other amazing, awesome, magical stuff, they now invented voice recognition.
Well, actually Steve Jobs alone invented all these without the help of any engineers or designers.

(Caution! Sarcasm on the loose!)

Edward Ricketts

Actually, your wrong. Apple greatly improved the smartphone, not making the first one, yet they made the first good tactile one with the 4 by 4 icon grid + dock. Apple invented the Newton, yet I don’t know much about tablets, so can’t say nothing there. They didn’t invent video-telephony, yet FaceTime wasn’t there first attempt, iChat was around for ages before. They didn’t invent voice recognition, yet, same as the iPhone, greatly improved on what was a pretty bad thing. All voice recognition before Siri was either plain bad, had a very little number of words or had a very bad AI. Siris selling point was the AI, that hadn’t been done well at all before.

mori bund

Why am I wrong? Have I denied that Apple IMPROVED a lot of things?
I am the first one who admits that Apple made amazing contributions to the IT-world – the IT-world would actually look very different – and definitely not better – without Apple.

It’s just annoying that not only fanboys but even “IT-experts” and journalists spread the myths of Apple’s fabulous inventions – and I’m not talking about improving, I’m talking here about singlehanded inventing all the good stuff:
just a few days ago I read a review here on ET about the new Samsung Galaxy S3, where the reviewer called Samsung’s Allshare an Apple Airplay-clone (Allshare is much longer around than Airplay – the clone is rather Airplay) and said that Samsung now tries to copy Siri (Samsung had voice recognition already more than two years ago in the original SGS – so as you said: Apple IMPROVED voice recognition, but they didn’t invent it).
And such annoying misinformation happens on this well-respected IT-site.^^

Roberto Pérez

Obviously you don’t know anything about Windows. Voice recognition has
been in there since years. It’s nothing new. Actually the first time I
used something comparable was on MS-DOS 5.xx. That must have been 20
years ago…

Jeff Williams

Hmmmm, how well does this work, “Dragon, change my meeting from 4pm to 5pm.?” Uhm…not very well. OH OH OH, How about, “Dragon, I’m locked out…….” Still waiting for “Dragon” to do something about it? Yep. C’mon people, yes, voice recognition has been around for ages, but stop being so disgruntled about Apple perfecting it. Sorry, let me rephrase that….stop being so disgruntled about Apple finding a company that perfected it and buying it and bringing to the masses. Yes, Windows has done all kinds of innovative stuff….but it NEVER works right and usually sucks.

kerry carlin

Amen! Windows innovates, yet still makes things soooo difficult, such as LAN printer setup when compared to a similar effort on a Mac.

Filip Anton

apple did not invent it. they bought it. stop giving them so much credit.

Moss

“Sorry, let me rephrase that….stop being so disgruntled about Apple finding a company that perfected it and buying it and bringing to the masses. ”
Although technically the company that invented it is part of Apple now so it’s not entirely incorrect to say Apple invented it.

Albert Giuiano

Dragon Naturally Speaking Ring a Bell….. Personally I’d Rather use a program named after a Fierce mythical creature then after a little girl….

When Apple steals its called innovative, maybe they should be sued for patent infringment.

Jeff Williams

LMAO….people like you crack me up. Apple doesn’t “steal” cool stuff. They SEEK it out from ingenious developers and then BUY it. Everybody wins. So quit being one of those Apple haters that think Apple steals all the cool stuff….no, they PAY for it and bring it to the masses!

http://twitter.com/ItsMeNeshi Dhanesh Verma

Macs All ready have Voice Recognition but siri would make it even Better!!!

http://slrman.wordpress.com James Smith

All the Apple-haters sing the same song. No matter what it is from Apple, it is unoriginal, derivative, and WIndows had it first. How blithely they ignore that everything they like about Windows was copied from Apple.

I suspect if Apple brought out a new system that was ten times as fast, ran any software no matter what OS it was written for, sold for $10, never crashed, was totally self-immunizing against all malware, and protected the user against the common cold, they would still whine and complain. Their attitude destroys all of their credibility, or at least what little they still had.

http://twitter.com/joeshaw97 Joe Shaw

but in this case it’s true? Windows has had it for ages…

http://slrman.wordpress.com James Smith

So what? HAs it ever worked even half so well on Windows? You could make that same argument that MS DOS allowed you to open files, write letters, and run programs before Apple, too.

Wait a year or so. Windows will have to come up with something that works as well as Siri. By then, those rascally gnomes at Apple will have moved the target again. They’ve done this every time with their OS. Just when Microsoft seemed to be catching up, they released a much more effective version.

Having said that, I feel that Win7 is the best, most stable version of Windows to date. I have even higher hopes for Win8. IN other words, they are more Mac-like than ever. :D

http://twitter.com/byl_tut byl_tut

MS? seriously? I think that’ll be google

http://slrman.wordpress.com James Smith

Hmm, now that you mention it, you may have a very good point there. Google is trying very hard to move into the broader playing field than just a search engine.

I’ve said before that Microsoft and Apple are both flying high now. Who is to say that there might be something in the works elsewhere that will supplant them both? It might be from a very small company or one that doesn’t even exist except as an idea. After all, that’s how Apple started.

http://twitter.com/drakesteele Drake W. Steele

By the way, just a small correction: Everything that originally made MacOS and Windows possible in the first place was basically borrowed from Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center or PARC. Both Jobs and Gates had taken tours of the place and seen the mouse and the point-and-click user interface… But Xerox wasn’t interested in home computing and let them use whatever they wanted from it… so no one stole anything, both borrowed from Xerox, then just kept adding features, and once they both had something up and running, customers saw features in one and asked for them in the other… so they obliged. And that’s gone both ways for a couple decades now.

http://slrman.wordpress.com James Smith

Yes, you are correct. Jobs did first see the GUI and mouse at PARC. Gates may have also seen it there but he did nothing at all about it until Apple released them for consumers. Microsoft has been playing “Me too” and trying to catch up from then until now.

Personally, I feel that WIn7 is the finest, most stable version of Windows ever released. Unfortunately, those sneaky elves at Apple keep moving the target. With the blending of iOS and OSX, they are still a couple of jumps ahead of Microsoft. I know they are trying to do something similar, but their market share of portable devices puts them rather behind the curve. That’s not a good position for them and who knows how they will react? The next five years are going to be very interesting. As I said before, perhaps even a new player will wipe them both out?

BS Potter

Back in 1992, I was using a Mac Quadra AV with Text to Speech and speech activation/control. So, … it’s not new on a Mac for sure. However, I don’t know when it was introduced.
It wasn’t bad .. but it wasn’t great either.
I think text to speech came in in 1984 with the first Mac.

mori bund

So many “if”s and “when”s… I guess your vision of a voice-commanded OS X finally overtaking Windows will happen right after the year of the Linux desktop. ;-)
Voice-controlled desktops will be a nice alternative in a few years – but not the killer feature you make out of it.
But most people are more comfortable with mouse and keyboard. It will take some time to change this.

BTW: I remember the articles about the “great visions” for 2005/2010 all the tech experts prophesied at the millennium. I’m still waiting for them to come true. And: no-one of them saw touch screens, touch screen keyboards, etc. But on the other hand: it’s a good thing, when you still have dreams ;-))

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

Well, the main thing for me is voice as an alternate, additional input. I would love to be able to tell my computer to do something while I’m busy watching a TV show in VLC, leaning back from my keyboard.

I’m not particularly interested in dictation.

mori bund

I don’t know why, but I actually shy away from voice control.
I’ve tried it once on my smartphone (the SGS has integrated Vlingo) and with my browser (Opera has it integrated for some years) and it worked actually pretty well in both cases… I’ve never used it again.
I guess most people feel uncomfortable talking to their computer, and it needs some time to change that. (The only times I talk to my pc are actually when I call him names because of a malfunction! ;-))

http://twitter.com/tedbox Ted Box

do you guys actually do any research before writing such articles? Siri is a not new form of tech… There are dozens of firms with similar technology available on the Mac today and I implemented a hardware / software combination on my Mac more than 20yrs ago! IBM was a leader in this field for many year, look up dragon, nuance and macspeech for a bit of an education in what’s possible… granted, if they did better marketing you’d probably know about it already…

Ashton Jackson

True all of these have been implemented for a while, but none of which are contextual. For all of nuance’s products, and even the older macspeech; commands are required to be (near) verbatim to what’s programmed in the command list. Whereas with Siri, a stable context reasoning has been put in place which even the newest Dragon Speak hasn’t managed to copy.

Brady Faist

not only is this tech not new(its not) nor did apple even “reinvent” it or “push the envelope” because droid beat them to it (not a unique phenomenon btw), but all that aside this article is terrible because it implies that your PHONE is doing the voice recognition. it isnt. siri’s limitations are software, not hardware, because all of siri’s calculations are done in the “cloud.” this means that if/when apple/google finishes the siri war, any of those things are possible.

Brady Faist

not only is this tech not new(its not) nor did apple even “reinvent” it
or “push the envelope” because droid beat them to it (not a unique
phenomenon btw), but all that aside this article is terrible because it
implies that your PHONE is doing the voice recognition. it isn’t. siri’s
limitations are software, not hardware, because all of siri’s
calculations are done in the “cloud.” this means that if/when
apple/google finishes the siri war, any of those things are possible currently.

putting it on a desktop would actually slow it down because of how crummy the internet backbone is in this country.

Anonymous

What a lot of the naysayers don’t seem to understand about Siri is that it’s not just voice control. It’s not just voice recognition. It doesn’t just let you do dictations.

The big thing about Siri which sets itself apart from everyone else is that Siri is contextual. It can figure out what you mean when you say “do I need a jacket when I goto Portland”, or “remind me to buy ham, eggs, and cheese when I get to the grocery Store”. And in return you’ll get a “Don’t think it’ll be too cold in Portland this week” followed by a weather report, and when you do get to the grocery store, you’ll be reminded by Siri to pick up your omelet makings.

Can i Just Say the Reason Apple Added Siri To The Iphone 4S is For Hands Free Driving…. they just show you things you could do with siri and the different places you could be if you didnt want to add things to your phone the hard way….

but in all its really ment to be for hands free driving…. and yet again apple is changing the way the world things about technology

and so there is the program called vlingo and i have not yet seen this program do what SIRI could do…. so dont hate on apple just because you are scared of change. apple is all about change….

Alvin Lee

haha…free driving. think about it… how do you activate siri?
u press home button. sometimes a button can cause tragedy.
no i personally think that siri was added for something else. maybe so all you have to do is press a button and speak to this apple phone?

http://twitter.com/joshua_beasley j t b

Siri on mac would just be awesome, i’ve been thinking this for ages. OSX does have a dictation feature, it has for years. But it doesn’t work very well. 10.8 has been announced now, and still no Siri. A revised Dictation feature but because they didn’t demo it at all, it can’t be that important. Just text

http://twitter.com/NihaalSharma Nihaal Sharma

well its coming on any os or not, windows 9 or not ..i dont care.. but m sure m gonnna make it now in one year for my window 7 .. by window macros speech recognition….yes its true for me….i can do it

http://www.facebook.com/angelinamoniquemalone Angelina Monique Malone

I really would be happy if real life got closer to star trek. woot. :)

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